Newark Incinerator's Neighbors Want Less Trash to Burn

By ROBIN SHULMAN

Published: June 10, 2005

Peeking out just past the rooftops of neat two- and three-story homes in the Ironbound section here are the smokestacks of the factories that gird the neighborhood.

Residents, many of them immigrants from Portugal, or from Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America, say they feel smothered by the factories, which include paint and chemical manufacturers. Although the huge pastel pink, blue and silver garbage incinerator nearby on Raymond Boulevard barely stands out, they say, they want less waste -- not more.

''Why can't New York burn its own garbage?'' said Vanesa Rodriguez, 23, an immigrant from Portugal pushing her daughter in a stroller. ''The air here is bad, really bad.''

Another resident, Krystyna Fitzsimmons, 57, spoke of the ''different strange smells over here: an acid smell, a fish smell, a diaper smell.''

''Whatever they're burning over there, it's up in the air,'' she said, referring to the incinerator. ''What we're breathing, I don't know.''

The plant burns about 930,000 tons of garbage a year, said Scott Cunningham, a manager at American Ref-Fuel, which owns it. Some 420,000 tons come from New York City, Mr. Cunningham said, adding that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's 20-year plan, which the City Council rejected on Wednesday, would have raised the amount of waste New York sent to the Ironbound to 500,000 tons a year.

Arnold Cohen, who directs the Ironbound Committee Against Toxic Waste, called the Council's action a ''success.''

''The incinerator is already polluting the neighborhood enough,'' he said.

Ana Baptista, who teaches a class on environmental issues in urban areas at Rutgers University, gives what she calls a Toxic Tour of the Ironbound.

Besides the trash incinerator there are the refineries and smelters along Doremus Avenue, long known as Chemical Row. There's the Diamond Superfund site, 66,000 cubic yards of dioxin-contaminated soil that includes the grounds where the Diamond Alkali Company produced 1 million gallons of Agent Orange for the Vietnam War.

Asthma rates are high, said Joseph Della Fave, the director of the Ironbound Community Corporation. ''In our day care program, upwards of 20 percent of the kids have asthma,'' he said.

Luis Ramon, 51, who lives in one of three public housing projects in the Ironbound, says he began to suffer from asthma only after he moved to New Jersey from Puerto Rico. ''If they bring more garbage, it will affect me,'' Mr. Ramon said. ''It will make it worse.''

But American Ref-Fuel's government affairs director, Susan King, said the levels of dioxins, mercury and lead emitted by the incinerator were well within acceptable standards.

Even so, no one wants to breathe the air near waste incineration, and if Lower Manhattan sends its waste to New Jersey for burning, some of the stench, and toxins, could waft right back to Manhattan on easterly winds, said Alan Jay Gerson, a New York City Council member who represents Lower Manhattan.

Councilman Gerson said New York should be phasing out incineration altogether, in favor of recycling, compacting and landfill. ''Alternatives exist,'' he said.

Photo: Krystyna Fitzsimmons, an Ironbound resident, describes bad smells in the area. (Photo by Marko Georgiev for The New York Times)